Disability activist reflects on Bush’s legacy through...

1of3Former President George H.W. Bush stands with Lex Frieden, chairperson of the National Council on Disability, during a reception and presentation ceremony of the George Bush Medal for the Empowerment of People with Disabilities, Monday, July 25, 2005 at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. This year marks the 15-year anniversary of Bush signing into law the Americans with Disabilities Act. (AP Photo/ Haraz N. Ghanbari)Photo: HARAZ N. GHANBARI, STF / ASSOCIATED PRESS

2of3Former President George W. Bush, left, wheels his father, former president George H.W. Bush into the church for the funeral of first lady Barbara Bush at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston on Saturday, April 21, 2018Photo: Brett Coomer, Staff / Houston Chronicle

3of3In this July 2005 White House, President George W. Bush gives a tour of the Oval Office after the signing of the Presidential Proclamation to Commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Meeting participants from left: President Bush; Susan Buckland, associate director of the Domestic Policy Council; Jan Tuck, chair, Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Access Board; former President George H.W. Bush; Dr. Lex Frieden, chair, National Council on Disability; Madeleine Will, chair, President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities; Mike Deland, former director of White House Council on Environmental Quality under President George H.W. Bush; and Lucy Aponte and Berthy De La Rosa-Aponte, chair, Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Advisory Panel.Photo: ERIC DRAPER, HO / AP

Lex Frieden’s first formal meeting with George H.W. Bush came about as an indirect result of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion on Jan. 28, 1986.

Frieden, then director of the National Council on Disabilities, and three other colleagues were set to meet with President Ronald Reagan to discuss a report they authored which recommended a law that would later come to be known as the American Disabilities Act, or the ADA.

With Reagan focused on the Challenger, Frieden and his colleagues were instead invited to meet with then Vice President Bush. Frieden recalls Bush expressed his interest in the report, having reviewed it the night before with his wife Barbara. The vice president assured Frieden he would do more if he had the power to do so.

Bush later won the presidency, and on July 26, 1990, he kept his word, signing the ADA into law.

“He will be remembered as the ADA president,” Frieden said, “the one that made America accessible to all.”

Frieden, a professor at the School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth and prominent local disability rights activist, said the ADA was perhaps the most significant piece of legislation in Bush’s one term. Within just a few years of its passing, the everyday landscape of the country transformed for Americans with disabilities. Public buses across the United States added ramps. Employers rewrote their hiring practices. Businesses, including restaurants and theaters, became more physically accommodating.

Seeing the changes meant the world to individuals like Frieden who said he suffered discrimination in a pre-ADA world. A car accident in 1968 left Frieden paralyzed from the neck down. When he applied to Oral Roberts University in his home state of Oklahoma, he said he was turned away due to his disability.

“Those experiences were demeaning, gut-wrenching,” he said. “Unfortunately, we still see people making exceptions to what we know to be the rule.”

Frieden cited the ride-sharing app, Uber, as an example of a modern-day company that has struggled to address accessibility. Since the company relies on drivers’ personal vehicles, wheelchair accessible options have been limited. On Nov. 20, Uber announced a partnership with MV Transportation to improve the number of modified vehicles available to customers.

Looking back at the ADA’s consequences, Frieden acknowledged how in his later years Bush himself came to benefit from the law’s passage. Frieden particularly calls a meeting in downtown Houston a few years ago when street construction prevented immediate access to the meeting site. So Bush’s assistant had to help maneuver the former president’s wheelchair up and down sidewalk ramps to reach their destination.

“He didn’t do it for himself,” Frieden said of Bush signing the law, “he did it for others.”

Yet in his final years, he said, Bush got a chance to see the world from Frieden’s perspective and got to witness firsthand the lasting impact of the ADA.

Ileana Najarro covers race, labor and immigration. She formerly covered small business and the intersection of immigration and the economy. She previously interned at the Los Angeles Times, the Mexico City bureau of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Communication, Departmental Honors and Phi Beta Kappa distinction.